Blurred line between fantasy and reality

I stumbled upon this story and tried my best to find something to write.  Unfortunately, I don’t have many words to fill a lot of this up.  So, all I have is the video report but I do have a few thoughts before you view the clip.

Society has a way to blame every thing for everything that goes on in our communities — especially when it affects the youths.  There are government hearings to try to ban rap music and videos that degrade women, gang members-turned-rappers being banned from concerts and lyrics about guns.  However, sex is touchy.

On Jamie Foxx’s first album Unpredictable, his song “Three Letter Word,” Foxx sang:  Sex, all the time…Sex, on my mind…Sex, everywhere I go…It’s getting to the point where I watch it on TV, when I buy DVDs. The song basically shows that you can’t avoid sex — it’s around you constantly. From magazines to TVs to right down to the movies you buy.  Because sex sells, so it gets hushed.

Sex has corrupted minds to the point that has blurred the line between what’s fantasy and what’s reality.  In the street vernacular it’s called ‘running the train.’  In the pornographic community, it is known as a gang bang.  For the rest of society, it is simply a gang rape.  One act, three different ideas.  For a lot of people, it’s their fantasy to perform a gang bang on a female — or to ‘run the train.’  But the reality is that this fantasy can get you prison time.

While listening to this story of a teenage girl getting gang raped at a school dance in Richmond, Cali., I wasn’t a bit surprised to hear that there were at least 10 people there watching (and some who participated) and none of them reported the act to the authorities.  Why would they? It’s a fantasy right? Don’t most men want to ‘run a train’ on a female? Aren’t there women out there who want to have sex with multiple men at the same time?

Despite the fact the girl was underage drinking, the blame doesn’t fall on the victim or the assailants — but on society’s insatiable lust of sex.  It is why we don’t know the difference — that one man’s fantasy is another man’s rape.

A look behind blaxploitation and ‘Black Dynamite’

Question: Is a blaxploitation movie still a blaxploitation movie when it’s made by black people?

Blaxploitation films begin in 1970 as a way to target black audiences — especially those in the urban communities.  Blaxploitation (a portmanteau of the words ‘black’ and ‘exploitation) films were known for their soundtracks featuring funk and soul music and featuring predominately black actors. 

Superfly was a blaxploitation film that was released in 1972 starring Ron O'Neal.

However, these blaxploitation movies may have done more harm than good.  Most of the movies were based in the ghetto and depicted crime, drug dealing and filled with ethnic slurs.  This resulted in the perpetuation of sterotypes such as pimps and drug dealers — all in line with how whites viewed blacks in the inner city during this era.  Most notable blaxploitation films include Superfly, Blacula, Cleopatra Jones and Foxy Brown.

Fast forwarding to today.  In recent years, blaxploitation movies still present viewers with the same characteristics and premises as those from the 70s.  One of the more all-around contemporary blaxploitation film is Undercover Brother starring Eddie Griffin.  On Oct. 16th, the newest in the line of blaxploitation will be released, Black Dynamite.

Black Dynamite is Michael Jai White’s brain child (sort of).  A true throwback to the genre, White stars as Black Dynamite, a former CIA agent in 1972 that is called back into duty to stop an Italian mob from putting heroin into black orphanages.  With character names like Sweetmeat, Mo Bitches and Chocolate Giddy-Up, it defines the typical brand.

White said that the movie pays homage to the blaxploitation films from 39 years ago.  I intially begin writing this piece questioning why would you pay homage to a genre of movies that was so stereotypical in nature with another movie of the same ilk?  Wouldn’t it be better to do a film disspelling the stereotypical blaxploitation movie?  And is it realy blaxploitation when blacks have a hand in the making of it?

But then I read a quote by White from gothamist.com were he said:

When it first started it was an incredible thing of pride for African-Americans, who only had subservient characters as representations of them in years prior. So for the first time you had actual alpha males in leading roles and the movies were actually very quality films.

That made me rethink my original thesis.  Maybe blaxploitation films weren’t bad after all. Maybe they just send out the wrong message — like rap music has done.

BELOW IS THE TRAILER FOR BLACK DYNAMITE, in theaters Friday, Oct. 16

Innocent lost, part 2

Sherdavin Jenkins’ murder trial couldn’t have come at a more unfortunate time.

The past two weeks has seen the death of and a severely injured youth — both in Chicago and both by beating.  The victims were 16-year-old Derrion Albert and a 14-year-old, both are boys.  

Derrion Albert, 16, was beaten to death by gangs on a Chicago street on Sept. 24.

Albert was beaten to death in front of the Agape Community Center on Sept. 24 by a gang of boys which was recorded by an eyewitness (see video here).  Then, less than a week later, the 14-year-old was beaten at night on another side of the city.  The younger of the two victims fortunately survived.

Just as in Jenkins’ case three years prior, the “street code” of ‘Stop Snitching’ has prevented anyone from coming forward with information about the deaths.  Luckily, circumstances allowed arrests to be made in both cases (thanks mainly to the video tape in Albert’s instance).  Three are charged in the Albert murder, the oldest being 19-years-old.

Although the ‘Stop Snitching’ credo has been around since 1999, rapper Cam’ron made it infamous in his 60 Minutes interview in 2007.  After being shot in 2005, Cam’ron refused to reveal who shot him saying:

“Because with the type of business I’m in, it would definitely hurt my business.  And the way I was raised, I just don’t do that.  I was raised differently, not to tell,” Cam’ron said.

As much debate can be said about the good and/or bad of the rap culture,  statements and ideas such as those presented by Cam’ron, along with the glorification of the street life by rappers has put a black light over the culture of rap music.  By that argument can wait for another blog space.

What must happen is the lost of innocence, like that of Jenkins and Albert.  Rather being gunned down accidentally or bludgeon to death, kids losing their lives long before it can get started good is senseless and ridiculous.  If the children are our future, and they are being eliminated, will there be a future?